For HIV patients, a new reason for hope

When Yves Brunet was diagnosed with human immunodeficiency virus in 1986, the infectious disease was still considered a death sentence for many patients.Jean Levac
/ Ottawa Citizen

When Yves Brunet was diagnosed with human immunodeficiency virus in 1986, the infectious disease was still considered a death sentence for many patients.Jean Levac
/ Ottawa Citizen

OTTAWA — When Yves Brunet was diagnosed with human immunodeficiency virus in 1986, the infectious disease was still considered a death sentence for many patients. Over the years, Brunet outlived some of his HIV-positive friends, saw stigma and ignorance slowly begin to shift, and witnessed a revolution in the treatment of the disease.

Nearly 30 years later, the former public servant wears the scars from decades of fighting HIV and the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, or AIDS, that the virus can bring on. He is legally blind, for one, and suffers numerous health effects from years of infections and trial-and-error treatments. But the 54-year-old now lives in an era in which drugs can control HIV in most cases and there is new talk of finding a cure.

During his darkest days, Brunet says it was hope that kept him going.

This week, Brunet and others living with HIV and AIDS found a new reason to hope that a cure will eventually be found.

Canadian researchers — including a team in Ottawa lead by Dr. Jonathan Angel at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute — were awarded a total of $10.7 million in federal funding, of which the bulk, $8.7 million, will go to the Canadian HIV Cure Enterprise.

“Scientific evidence is indicating that the time to increase our efforts in the search for a cure is now,” said federal Health Minister Rona Ambrose, who announced the funding in Montreal, where the project’s leader, Dr. Éric Cohen, is based.

The goal — to find a cure for HIV — is more a marathon than a sprint, in Angel’s view.

“We don’t know where the finish line is,” he said. But there is a growing global belief that a cure is within reach, especially in the light of cases in which HIV appeared to have been cured after patients received bone marrow transplants following chemotherapy.

Those cases, which were presented at the International AIDS Society meeting in Malaysia earlier this year, helped spur a renewed global effort to search for a cure for AIDS, said Angel.

Canada’s role in the search will be supported by what is one of the largest blocks of funding for research into the disease and a collaboration of the country’s leading HIV researchers aimed at finding new approaches to curing HIV. The projects — the Canadian HIV Cure Enterprise and a project focused on curing babies who acquire HIV from their mothers during pregnancy — are a collaboration of the International AIDS Society, the Canadian Foundation for AIDS Research (CANFAR) and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

The Ottawa research projects will include human clinical trials of a therapeutic HIV vaccine and an immune-stimulating protein. Other work will include developing a better understanding of how HIV hides in certain cells and harnessing oncolytic (cancer-fighting) viruses to attack HIV-infected cells.

Treatment for HIV has progressed so quickly in recent years that, in many patients, it is treated as a chronic disease that can be controlled by a pill taken once a day, said Angel. New therapies can reduce the virus to non-detectable levels in patients, although the virus returns when the treatment ends — something Ottawa researchers will study.

Still, there are side effects for some while others, such as Brunet, suffer long-term damage from living with experimental treatments and effects of the disease for so many years.

Especially at a time when HIV is on the rise, Christopher Bunting, president and chief executive of CANFAR, said it is more important than ever to “bring this epidemic to its knees.”

Canadian researchers are just part of the global effort to do just that, but will provide important contributions to the knowledge,” said Angel.

Canadian Olympic swimmer Mark Tewksbury, who is an ambassador for CANFAR, called the funding “a big step forward.”

But he, like Angel, is cautious about when that cure will be found or even if it will be one or more types of cures. “Realistically, I don’t know when that end is going to happen, but there is reason to feel some real progress has been made.”

Brunet will be watching.

“It would be really nice to find a cure so that this is something that would be more manageable. I feel older than my own age because of all the different drugs and conditions I have.”

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